The Amazing History of Candles The history of candles is a long and interesting one. We have been using them for light for many centuries. Over that time candles have been made out of various substances. Some of these were better than others. Let's look further into this history to see what we find. No one knows when the very first candle was lit for sure. But the first people to make certain advances with something that could be called a forerunner to the candle were the ancient Egyptians. It was basically a reed soaked in the fat from
animals. It was known as a rushlight and got lit on the end. The Romans have the distinction of discovering the candle with a wick. All of the early candles were made from tallow which is another name for animal fat. The good thing about tallow is it was cheap; the bad thing was that it produced smoke when it burned, and did not smell very good at all. Then advancement was made in the history of candles, namely beeswax. It was found that beeswax could be melted and made into candles during the
Middle Ages. This type of wax burned clean and had no foul odor. The main problem with the beeswax was that it was expensive, so only the wealthy could afford to use candles made from it. The poorer folks still had to use the tallow candles. Candle makers kept searching for better substances to make candles out of. During colonial times in America they discovered that the berries from the bayberry plant could be used to make a wax. The berries were boiled to make a wax that had a sweet scent. This did away with